Scrabble days, family days, friendship days. Those days when home games were about people, collectives, gatherings. Before video games, internet games, and computer stuff took over our home existence. Scrabble was a favorite childhood leisure in my family. Parents and children were into it. Scrabble tournaments were held in school. Scrabble brought friends together. These days, humanity is mostly alone. Hence, funky inertia takes over. What’d life be when AI takes over? 🧮📝🗂
House chore implements. <>“Walis tingting” is an outdoor hard-broom made from the hard primary veins of the leaves of the coconut palm. Houses back home in the Philippines are usually gated. Cleaning the yard with “walis tingting” is an ordinary task. “Bunot” is "coconut brush" used in polishing/brushing the floor, usually wood house flooring. Good exercise as well to use “bunot” over floor polishers, which are used only in work offices. These house tools save electric power as well. 🧹🧺🧹
Vinyl library. I still keep vinyls and play them, once in a while. In fact, I prefer vinyl records spinning on a turntable over other ways to listen and enjoy music. I don’t like 1,001 songs in downloads or stocked up in a computer file. Those years, as a boy, when I spent hours and hours reading what was written on LP sleeves, listening to all kinds of music. The vinyl was invented by Emile Berliner in 1887, a lateral-cut flat disc to be played on the gramophone. Cool! 🎼🎧🎼
When I was in high school, me and some choice classmates would organize “disco-dancing” at a friend’s house. We’d pool resources or money for food and stuff but no alcoholic beverages because parents are at home. Even when mom and dad were out somewhere for the weekend, neighbors will know. Although they will not call the police, they will surely report to parents what’s going on. Those Friday or Saturday night dance frolic were fun. Of course, it was “Saturday Night Fever” and salsa days. 💃👯♀️🕺
When I was in middle high school, I co-founded a “little secret club” called Bredspays. That was after I saw the movie “Bless the Beasts and Children.” The 1971 film follows six teenaged “misfit” boys who are ostracized by other boys but form a bond among themselves. After seeing a herd of bison selected for culling by local hunters, they resolve to set the penned bison free. The Bredspays did similar stuff as well. Just remembering youth when we actually gathered as a cohesive unit and had fun doing good deeds. ☮️🦬☮️
Partially inspired by American mainstream comic strips and comic books, “komiks” has been widespread and popular throughout the Philippines from the 1920s to the present. I grew up with them; whenever my dad got home from work, he’d bring home a Liwayway “komiks-magasin” for mom and two boxes of Max’s fried chicken for the family. I will go for Liwayway, instead. My most favorite “komiks” author was Jim Fernandez, who crafted the wildly popular “Zuma” series. 📰🗞📰
How did you record rock concerts then? This dude (photo credit, CTTO) is quite inventive, isn’t it? Music festivals were fun! Remember Woodstock? Sure, there were fights or disturbances then. For example, the Altamont rock concert in California in 1969 where the Hells Angels were involved. But I didn’t shun concerts then, 1980s to early 2000s. It was still relatively peaceful. Unlike these days. Mass shootings and insane theatrics of hate mar concerts or public gatherings. 🎸☮️🪘
As a little boy, I was a huge fan of war/soldier TV shows: Combat! Rat Patrol. Garrison’s Gorillas. And cowboy movies. I still watch war movies, Westerns, and police procedurals, of course. Guns and bombs and crime or human annihilation are staples of these shows. Yet I evolved as a virulent anti-war activist and advocate of gun regulation. I am anti-war but I am not anti-military, I must repeat. And I hope discussion of this subject is as civil and grown-up as in the past. ☮️☮️☮️
Building or crafting a diorama from old luggages (“maleta”) was a childhood obsession. I would gather my toy soldiers and animals and superheroes and other tiny implements and construct a village, war zone, school ground, zoo, jungle, or sports plaza etcetera. That way, I could “create” a physical manifestation of the fictions in my head as a kid. I would spend hours and hours in a room while other children played outside. Busy, busy brain cells of mine. (Photo: Freepik.) 👦🧸👦
Flying kites in the meadow. That was my childhood. Summertime fun! Most kites were devised from old newspapers, crafted on bamboo stick frames. Strings were just about anything that we could find or improvise. There were afternoons when dozens of kites flew and soared in the air. There were even “dogfights” or kite battles up there! Some kids would save money, from school allowance, to buy colorful crepe papers for their kite body and tails. Cool! (Photo: CTTO.) 🌬🌤🎉
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